January is Human Trafficking Prevention Month

January recognizes and brings awareness to national Human Trafficking Prevention Month. Children and youth with a history of child welfare involvement are especially vulnerable to trafficking. Professionals can learn how to recognize the red flags of human trafficking to help identify and prevent exploitation.

The Office of the Texas Governor’s Child Sex Trafficking Team (CSTT) builds capacity in Texas to serve victims of trafficking and to raise awareness to prevent, interdict, and prosecute child exploitation. The CSTT team provides awareness materials, education resources, and research for judges, attorneys, child welfare professionals, and other stakeholders related to child sex trafficking.

The Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS) Human Trafficking and Child Exploitation Division educates and spreads awareness to identify, report, recover, and restore child and youth victims of trafficking who are served by DFPS. The division created a webpage with information on Texas’ Human Trafficking Prevention Month and published a 2026 Participation Guide with resources, including registration for key events such as a Light the Way: End Human Trafficking Lunch and Learn Series that occurs every Friday in January 2026.

The Texas Health & Human Services Human Trafficking Resource Center promotes, assists and funds efforts that stop human trafficking. The center contains information about how to identify human trafficking as well as state and federal resources.

By utilizing the above resources, judges and attorneys can actively engage in human trafficking awareness and prevention, to the benefit of children, youth, and families experiencing the child welfare system in Texas.

Now Available:
Commercial Sexual Exploitation Identification Tool (CSE-IT)
Training Overview

A recording of the recent Children’s Commission webinar entitled “Commercial Sexual Exploitation Identification Tool (CSE-IT) Training Overview” is now available on the Children’s Commission’s On-Demand Training and MCLE webpage.

The webinar included an overview of the CSE-IT as a method of screening and identifying children and youth who may be at risk of commercial sexual exploitation. Kellye Turner, Awareness, Prevention, and Justice Solutions Lead with the Office of the Texas Governor’s Child Sex Trafficking Team, provided a framework for engaging with children and youth who may have unknowingly experienced commercial sexual exploitation, how trauma and repeated trauma impacts the brain, and the importance of a victim-centered approach when working with victims of human trafficking.

The State Bar of Texas approved 1.0 hour of MCLE for the webinar. This course was approved by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization for 1.0 hour of certification and recertification continuing legal education requirements for attorneys and paralegals in the specialty fields of Child Welfare Law and Family Law. This course has been approved for 1.0 hour of Family Violence (FV) credit.

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For a complete list of Resource Letters, please visit the Children's Commission webpage. Information provided by the Children’s Commission should not be read as a commentary by the Supreme Court of Texas or any other court. The Children’s Commission website is not equipped to facilitate dialogue or conversation about matters related to the information in this communique. For more information about the Children’s Commission, please visit our website.

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